


In Shadow and Silence

by Yahtzee



Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Canon, Blindness, First Kiss, First Time, M/M, Medical Trauma, Muteness, petting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-04
Updated: 2012-01-03
Packaged: 2017-10-28 21:24:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 13,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/312320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yahtzee/pseuds/Yahtzee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the following prompt: <i>Erik is an aggressive, dangerous, cynical mutant, hardened from years of being passed through private laboratories and used for experimentation. He's covered in surgical scars from operations, tattooed and bar coded like a lab rat, and blind from an experiment done on his eyes. ...  Charles Xavier finds out about him. Charles runs a sort of sanctuary for mutants that provides lost, abandoned, abused, runaway mutants with shelter, comfort, and help with ability control. He thinks he can rehabilitate Erik and save him from execution, and convinces the government that he can.</i></p><p><i>When Erik arrives, he is a lot worse than Charles thought he would be ... Everyone else can see that Erik is a nuclear bomb waiting to go off, but Charles refuses to give up on him. ...</i></p><p><i>The first time Charles sneaks up on him wearing no metal, it triggers him and he reacts instinctively, with violence. ...  Erik discovers why Charles understands him so well: he was once used in experiments as well, experiments run by his own family, and in one of them, he lost his voice, so he uses his telepathy to communicate.</i></p><p>Blind Erik, mute Charles, the love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Erik cannot forget the day the Nazis tattooed numbers onto his forearm. He bit his lip, felt tears of pain swimming in his eyes but refused to cry. Crying would reveal how much they were hurting him, and he never, ever wanted to give them the satisfaction. He was still only a child then, and he thought things like that mattered.

As he watched the needle pricking his skin over and over in an attempt to turn him from a person with a name to a thing with a number, Erik swore that he would never forget this. He’d give the tattoo its own meaning. The ink in his skin was a reminder of his hatred. Of his revenge. Of the struggle he would never, ever give up.

Now it’s the thing he misses seeing most of all.

He tries to run his fingers over the spot on his forearm – he knows the place well enough by touch – but the plastic cuffs are too tight to allow it. The chafing around his wrists might be bleeding by now; there’s moisture there, but it could as easily be sweat. He is surrounded by overheated, still, stale air that smells of body odor and urine – only the coldness of the rough concrete floor provides any relief to his naked, bruised flesh. They don’t bother with air conditioning in this part of the compound. Once you get here, you are beyond considerations like “comfort” or “good health.” This is … storage, no more.

Erik doesn’t mind it. This is the end; by now, that’s enough for him.

In the past months, his hearing has become slightly sharper – not superhuman, but better than before. Or maybe he just pays more attention now to what he can hear. At any rate, he catches the words uttered outside his door, though they are hardly more than a murmur:

“Come on. They can’t. This one’s a Level Five.”

“That’s what the order says.”

“Level Fives are strictly C or D.”

 _Convert or Destroy_. It’s a term they have here. It means that you learn to follow their orders or you’re put down like a dog. Erik has been waiting to be put down for a couple weeks now.

How will they do it? He could dodge a bullet, melt a gun. Even now, with his powers under a damper of a drug cocktail that makes his mouth taste sticky sweet and his head swim, he probably retains that much ability. They can’t even give him a shot if he doesn’t consent. Erik would sense the needle and twist it into a knot. (The drugs are pumped into his stomach through a plastic tube they jam down his throat so roughly that by now he can’t even swallow without pain.) Hanging, he’d thought. That seemed most likely.

But as he listens, incredulous, he realizes the question may have become irrelevant.

“Where the hell is this, what do you call it, Xavier Home?”

“New York. Upstate. We’ve sent a couple others there, over the years.”

“You didn’t send any goddamn Level Fives.”

“What the hell are we supposed to do? This is the order. We dope Lehnsherr up, drop him off at Xavier’s while he’s still out like a light, and after that? He’s not our problem.”

“That one gets loose – he’s everybody’s problem.”

You have no idea, Erik thinks.

“Listen. Take it up with Frost if you want to. But an order’s an order.”

“Shit. Who is this Xavier?”

“Some millionaire. Gave so much to the Kennedy campaign that Papa Joe didn’t have to buy the presidency for his boy; Xavier practically did it for him.”

“So that’s why he’s got the clout, huh? Well, I hope he knows what he’s doing. Me, I don’t want to be anywhere near Lehnsherr when those cuffs come off.”

Maybe Erik should be relieved he will not die in this miserable place. Even though they are only taking him to another jail, perhaps a worse one – difficult as that is to imagine – he will not die here, not at Shaw’s hand. And in the new jail, the millionaire with the keys will not know Erik’s talents and habits. He will be making up the security protocols for Erik as they go. That gives Erik a chance to escape … how good a chance, only time can tell.

He would be relieved if he could even imagine how to live on the outside now. But he can’t.

They are letting him go only after they took his sight.

**

The doctors – if you can call people who have forgotten the Hippocratic oath doctors – helpfully explained that he isn’t wholly blind.

Erik realizes that much. He knows the difference between night and day, between brilliant illumination and none at all. It is the difference between taupe, grey and black. Every once in a while, if something moves very close to his face and very fast, like a club or a fist, Erik gets a sense of the motion. But that’s all he has left, and all he is likely ever to have.

Being blind isn’t what eats at him. No, Erik could have endured losing his sight. What he cannot endure is the fact that it was taken from him, by force, by cruelty.

By the person he hates the most in the world.

The person Erik will now never have the chance to kill.

**

He fights the tube merely enough to convince them his behavior hasn’t changed; this transfer is Erik’s only shot at survival and therefore freedom, and he knows it.

But as he gags around the plastic, as his gut clenches at the acid burn of the drugs, Erik wonders what the Xavier Home might be. A private house of horrors, perhaps, with mutants displayed, tortured or even killed at the whims of the rich and powerful. It may be only another research facility, this one operating beyond the reach of the government. More mercifully, it might be a sort of zoo.

As sticky-sweet drugged sleep begins to claim him, Erik experiences a feeling he’s known only once before, on the train to Auschwitz. He doesn’t know what’s coming, can hardly face it, overcome as he is by the weight of enforced passivity. All he knows is that he’s already in hell – and wherever he’s going next is probably worse.

For a time it is darker than dark, and he knows nothing.

Then he awakens.

Erik reaches out first with the sense he trusts most – his connection to metal. There’s a little, very little, but perhaps enough when he gets his strength back. Carefully he traces the outlines and tries to use them to orient himself. There, with the twin spots of metal on one straight vertical line and a larger one halfway between them and to the side – hinges and a doorknob. The way out is directly across from his bed, perhaps five feet away. Of course, that metal no doubt includes a lock, which he is not yet capable of picking. But give him time.

Other senses begin to demand their due, however. Slowly Erik registers that he is lying on something soft, if dense … an old-fashioned feather mattress. He remembers that smell from childhood, musty and yet vaguely comforting. He’s a couple feet from the floor, so he must be in an actual bed. Erik had almost forgotten what that felt like. The bed is old-fashioned too; there’s no metal, so it must be wood joined together. It’s almost as if … as if someone had wanted to keep metal away from him as much as possible, and yet cared about his comfort.

Or, more likely, that this place is ancient and run down, and that he’ll be kept like a 19th-century madman.

Yet there are no chains. The cuffs are gone, though his wrists are still raw. Someone even dressed him; the sensation of soft cotton against his skin feels almost alien. A T-shirt and some sort of underwear: It’s not much, but he’s grateful for what little dignity has been restored.

Head still swimming from the drugs, Erik dares to sit up. Though the room tilts precariously around him, he doesn’t vomit or pass out. The quality of the darkness changes, and his face is now slightly warmer than the rest of him.

A window, he realizes. They’ve given the blind man a view.

The joke is so bitter that he would have to laugh, were it not for the fact that his hearing is beginning to return to him, or more precisely, is no longer drowned out by the rushing of blood through his ears.

And the fact that he can hear someone else breathing.  Someone else in this very room.

Even as he stiffens, a soft, masculine voice inside his head whispers, _Don’t be afraid._

Erik pushes himself from the bed. The woven rug beneath his feet feels as strange as wearing clothing. Every muscle tenses. Sick and weak as he is, he can’t decide whether to rush the intruder or get as far away from him as possible.

But what’s the point of running? This is a telepath, a telepath just like that damned Emma Frost, and there’s no protection against them –

 _Please, don’t be so upset. I won’t violate your mind._

“You’re doing it – ” Erik’s raw throat can hardly croak out the words. “Doing it right now.”

 _We’re just having a chat._ He has an English accent. Why do their voices always sound the same inside your head as inside their mouths? Erik’s never understood that, has always hated it.

 _It’s all right. You’re safe here, Erik._

Maybe it’s the lie, that he’s “safe” in his new prison. Maybe it’s the English accent. Maybe it’s that this bastard already dug deep enough into his brain to know his name.

Whatever it is, it pushes Erik over the edge.

“Get out of my head!” Erik shouts. His throat turns into fire and blood. But he hurls himself at the sound of the breathing, and despite the drugs and the bruises and the months of inactivity, he’s strong enough to take the guy down. For a moment they grapple – Erik claws at what feels like his midsection, and his elbow slams against something that might be a jaw – the telepath’s breaths are high and fast – and then Erik hears the other jailers coming.

“Hank! Armando! Come quick!” A woman’s voice – no, a girl’s. “He’s got Charles!”

“On my way!” A young man, that one. “Don’t be silly, Professor, we’ve got to do something – hold on – ”

Then a fist rams into Erik’s gut; it’s not that strong a punch, but in Erik’s condition, it doesn’t take much. He rolls over, gagging, even as he hears the jailers fumbling with the lock on the door.

 _I’m sorry_ , the voice says, and suddenly Erik thinks it would be a marvelous idea to go to sleep for a very long time, starting right now, and he does.

**

“Hey. Can you hear me? Charles says we’re not supposed to startle you again.”

Erik stirs on the bed. Bed? Memory floods in, and with the drugs now much diluted in his system, he can think more clearly. He has been transferred to some “Xavier Home.” A telepath was trying to influence his mind and forced him back to sleep. This is the young girl he heard before, and she’s sitting very close by.

“You know I can tell you’re awake, right?” She sounds exasperated in an unmistakably teenage way, as though he had just told her Elvis Presley wasn’t cool. “So sit up already.”

He whispers, “What happens if I don’t?” Speaking still hurts, but less.

“Nothing, really, but it’s gonna make it really hard to drink your 7-Up.”

7-Up? It’s been months since he had anything besides the nutrient mush they were slopped at the lab. But he can hear fizzing from an open bottle. He breathes in through his nose and smells not only the soda but something vaguely buttery …

Her voice is less petulant now. “Come on. You’ve got to be hungry, right?”

Erik sits up. Perhaps the food is drugged, but nonetheless, he needs calories if he is to regain any strength.

“Don’t go wild again, okay? I’m going to put the dinner tray on the bed. There’ll be one rail on either side of you. No biggie.” He hears the clink of china on plastic, feels the weight press down the feather mattress on each side of his thighs. She is close enough now that he can smell her perfume …  floral, and too much of it, the way girls prefer when they’re just starting out. “There we go. The bottle of 7-Up is at the top right corner of your tray. Dead center is a plate of scrambled eggs. Right to the left of the plate is a fork. Bon appetit, like that lady on TV says.”

Erik reaches out tentatively. He’s been lied to before. But his fingers make contact with glass, cool glass moist with condensation, and there are little circular divots in the surface that he remembers from a bottle of 7-Up.  He lifts it, trying to recall the length of it – and he does, the lip of the bottle making contact with his mouth. Then he gulps down the soda, sweet and cool and sparkling and yet gentle on his tender throat and gut.

“There you go,” she says, and he can hear the smile in her voice.

Next he finds the fork – plastic, unsurprisingly – and stabs at the plate. The whole process is awkward. He hasn’t learned how to manage this; since being blinded, he hasn’t once eaten normally, has only been fed like an animal, sometimes force-fed. But the eggs are dry enough to be easily speared. They are also bland, devoid of salt or the heaps of black pepper he favors.  But they’re food, real food, more delicious to him than anything else he’s ever had. Only the strictest self-control keeps him from wolfing it down; he tries to have some semblance of table manners. He likes to remind his captors, from time to time, that he is a person and not a beast.

As he’s washing down the final bite with yet more of the soda, the girl finally speaks again. “I’m Raven, by the way.”

“Raven,” he repeats. “Erik.”

He’s ingratiating himself, but little gestures like these sometimes get inexperienced jailers off their guard. And what kind of jail is this that gives the keys to a mere girl?

“Erik. Nice to meet you.” But then the shadow creeps back into her voice. “Next time you meet my brother, would you mind not beating the shit out of him while he’s trying to be nice to you?”

Erik’s hand tenses around the bottle. That could be made a weapon if necessary – smash and slash. “Your brother. The telepath.”

“His name is Charles Xavier, and he’s the reason you’re still alive.”

Xavier’s Home. Charles Xavier the millionaire. It makes a perverse sort of sense, that soft voice and those comforting words sheathing the power and menace within. “He went into my mind.”

“Yeah, he did.” Raven snatches the tray away, plate clattering, then pries the empty soda bottle away from him. “Because he was trying to talk to you.”

“There are other ways to talk!”

She takes a deep, shuddering breath. “Not for Charles. Listen, being panicked about the mind-reading? I get it. I really do. It used to upset me too, when I was little. But I’ve gotten used to it since then. I’ve had to.”

Erik wonders if his contempt shows on his face. “He’s worn you down.”

“He _can’t speak_. Charles is mute.” Raven stomps to the door, and just as she goes out delivers her parting shot: “You’re not the only one they experimented on, you know.”

It slams into Erik – not guilt, because he will not apologize for defending himself, not ever. But … shame. For not recognizing another of their victims. For leaving scars that would match those of their captors.

The door slams shut. When the lock turns, Erik forgets to listen for the tumblers, to begin learning his way out. 


	2. Chapter 2

When next he sits up from his bed, the darkness is nearly total, and there is no answering warmth against his face. Either they have covered the windows or it is nighttime – on the balance, Erik considers the latter more likely

Finally he is alone to explore. Carefully he rises and stretches his hand backward toward the nearest wall. From there he is able to begin mapping his new cell. A bed, a rug. A chest of drawers – also fitted wood. There are two windows, not one, on the far wall; he never went far enough in that direction to realize it before. His heart thumps faster as he finds the door, but it is indeed locked. Are his powers restored enough to undo it? Maybe … but without knowing the schedule around here, the likelihood of guards down the hallway or at the perimeter, it’s a chance not worth taking. The conditions here are –

(not unlike those of a bed and breakfast –)

\--perfectly humane, and so Erik can afford to bide his time. He may only get one chance. Foolish to waste it.

Still, he remains at the door for a long while, his hand on the knob. They kept him so far away from metal at the lab, and he is starved for its presence. He lets the brass sing to him, the touch of it resonating throughout his bruised body. The sensation is the closest thing to joy he’s felt in years.

When he begins to sway on his feet, he returns to his bed; though he keeps one hand in front of him the whole way, everything is where he plotted it out. Within another day, he will find his path here as surely as if he retained his vision. But his satisfaction is dimmed by the exhaustion still heavy on him. As much as Erik has slept during the past day, his weary, battered body needs even more. Besides, God only knows how long he will keep the luxury of a bed. He could be back on concrete at any moment.

Even the slightest pleasures become miraculous when they have been long denied, and may never come again –

Erik awakens to the sound of a knock on the door.

Since when do jailers knock?

“Come in,” he says, to complete the parody. The hinges swing and the air moves slightly against his face as he sits up; he hears footsteps on the floor. But nobody speaks.

Oh.

Erik clears his still-sore throat. “Raven explained. I don’t like you in my mind, but – say what you must.”

 _I’ve very little to say, except that I’m sorry to have startled you yesterday. I thought having someone with you when you revived would be comforting. Obviously I miscalculated._ The dry humor crisps the edges of the thought as it brushes by Erik’s mind.

“I would not have hurt you if I’d known.”

 _I realize that. From now on, if you prefer, you can work with people able to speak with you through more conventional means. But – I’m Charles Xavier, I’m in charge here, and I suspect you must have many questions for me. I thought I’d give you the chance to ask them._

No doubt the answers will be lies, but even learning the lies is a place to start. Taking a good look at the drape thrown over this place might reveal the shape within. “What is – Xavier’s Home?”

 _Xavier’s Home for Mutant Convalescence and Care. We take in mutants who have been abused, turned out from their families, or -- when I can manage their release – those who have been experimented upon. We nurse them back to health. Those not wanted by the government, for various definitions of “wanted,” are free to come and go as they wish. As for the rest, they usually find they prefer this to Shaw Laboratories._

Erik can’t suppress a shudder.

Charles continues on smoothly, as if he has not noticed. _In the end, however, if you prefer to take your chances in the world – it’s your choice. All I ask is that you make your escape as convincing as possible without killing anyone. If I’m known to release mutants without authority, it will be much harder to rescue any others in future._

It is all so gently presented, so alluring, and tempered with just enough realism to seem plausible. “How did you learn about me?”

 _My sources with Shaw Laboratories … well, I don’t want to overstate the case. They tell me relatively little about their “patients.” But my talents allow me to learn more when I wish._

So, like all telepaths, Charles Xavier will violate minds. Erik expected no better, but it’s confusing, this mixture of fear and pity.

 _Must you feel either?_

“You could destroy me,” Erik says. Telepathy is one of the few things he has no defense against, as Shaw’s right-hand woman, Emma Frost, repeatedly proved.

 _And you could destroy me. Most of us have the capacity to destroy each other; destruction is sadly a very simple thing to accomplish. I prefer creation._

Erik isn’t sure how to react to this. Later, he’ll mull it over. For now, he focuses on the ways in which he and Charles Xavier are alike; if they share powers and experiences, perhaps they share weaknesses. He needs to know this man’s weaknesses. “Raven said you were experimented upon.”

A pause. _Yes._

“Shaw?”

 _No. The first scientist to experiment on me was my father._

Even the thought curdles Erik’s blood. Bad enough to be treated like an animal by hostile, venomous strangers – or your worst enemy, like Shaw – but when he tries to imagine his own father doing anything like this to him, he cannot. It would never have happened.

Distant as the memory of safety is to Erik, he treasures it, and the mother and father who made it possible for the few years of his childhood. What would it be like, never to have had it?

 _You’re imagining something far more dire than the reality. My father’s interest was genuine. He thought that he could help me by understanding my mutation._

“He experimented on a child.” The words come out as a growl that makes Erik’s throat ache. “Do you condone that?”

Another pause.   _No. I do not. My father’s actions were as wrong as his motives were benevolent._

“Then why do you make excuses for him?”

 _I suppose they are excuses. But you see – after his death, I fell into the keeping of Kurt Marko, who ran experiments of his own. His motives weren’t benevolent in the slightest. And I assure you, it makes a difference. I’ve been keenly aware of that difference every day of my life since._

“It was Marko who – ” What is the right phrase? “Who took your voice.”

There’s a sound from Charles then – not a vocalization, but a soft huff of air through his nose and throat that’s almost like a laugh. _Did you ever see the movie Mr. Smith Goes To Washington?_ Erik shakes his head no, unable to imagine how this could be relevant. _Well, in that film, there’s a scene where Jimmy Stewart’s character is supposed to have been filibustering – speaking for hours on end before Congress. His voice gives out, but he won’t stop. That’s how determined he is to do the right thing. Stewart was so focused on giving a good performance that he had the doctors swab his throat with mercuric chloride before the scene. He burned his own throat to recreate the pain.  Kurt Marko heard that story and it gave him an idea. He’d been trying to get me to project my thoughts into people’s heads – to speak to them telepathically, the way we’re speaking right now.  I couldn’t do it then, though. So he started burning my throat with chemicals. Making it impossible for me to talk for an hour, or a day – pushing me, always pushing –_

The silence within Erik’s head becomes as complete as the silence in the room around him. He senses that Charles is struggling. Remembers what it was like to be a small scared boy in a dark room with “Schmidt” asking him questions, asking him to do things he couldn’t, the promise of pain very near.

 _Eventually Marko went too far. He chose a solution even more acidic and toxic than he realized. They saved my life at the hospital, but not my voice._

“Did you get your revenge?”

 _There can be no revenge. He was complicit in my father’s death. He ruined my mother’s mind and her life. He tormented me. He let his son abuse me. To hurt him the way he hurt me – I would have to become someone I’d rather not._

“It can’t be as easy as that for you to let him walk away.”

 _I wouldn’t call it easy._

“I’m sorry. I should not have said that.”

 _You needn’t apologize,_ Charles replies so readily that it seems to be true. _It seems to me that we’re speaking rather comfortably now. Given how alike our paths have been – to me it makes sense that we should work together here. But if you’d rather have someone who doesn’t have to touch your mind, that can be arranged._

Erik considers this for a moment. As uneasy as he remains at the very thought of telepathy – he can believe now that Charles will curb his powers, if not to the extent Erik would wish, within some basic boundaries. At least, he will until Erik pushes. Erik doesn’t intend to push until he’s ready.

“Let’s begin, you and I.”

 _I like how you put that. Yes. Let’s begin._

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

They begin by getting to know the mansion, which Charles leads him through floor by floor. (His left hand is in the crook of Charles’ elbow; with his right he trails two fingers along the walls to better learn the layout. To his dismay, he often finds himself paying more attention to his left hand than his right.) There are no gates, no alarms. The locks on the doors are only standard, and most people don’t turn them as they walk in and out 

 _We won’t turn yours either, now that you know where you are, and there’s no danger of you hurrying off in a rush and hurting yourself_ , Charles claims 

Erik assumes that means a different kind of game is being played here, one that it may take a long time to understand. But he was trained well in games by Sebastian Shaw; he learns the rules quickly.

Next Erik gets to know the other residents of Xavier’s Home. Raven turns out to be an adopted sister – a fellow mutant Charles found in childhood. She has taken a liking to Erik that he realizes is not despite his blindness but because of it.

 _I can’t imagine why a shapeshifter would be self-conscious about her appearance, but there you have it,_ Charles explains. _It was a sore point between us before I lost my voice. Since then I’ve needed her more, and – we’ve tried harder, both of us. Do you know, I’d been mute five months before she’d finally let me speak inside her mind?_

Erik can imagine it quite easily.

There is one other young girl, Angel, but Shaw Laboratories plucked her wings to see if they would grow back. She doesn’t chatter away like Raven does. Erik understands her as a kindred spirit, but Angel has no use for that. It turns out her wings do grow back, but slowly; she sits quietly in various window seats waiting to fly again. He can feel the cool shadows she casts.

Then there are the boys: Sean, Armando, Alex.  They’re like puppies in their boundless energy, enthusiasm and resulting chaos.

Apparently Hank is no older than the boys, but he has both the education and responsibility of a grown man. The maturity, too – he seems to understand without being told that Erik has not willingly given himself to the care of a doctor since Auschwitz. Hank always asks permission before he touches Erik – every time, even if it’s the fifth or tenth time in a single exam – and he explains not only what he’s doing but why.

“I’m going to shine a light into your eyes, okay?”

“I’ve told you, I can see some light.”

“Yes, but I haven’t seen how your eye reacts to stimulation. I’m going to steady us both with a hand on your shoulder, all right?” Only after Erik nods does Hank touch him, and even then he is gentle. “If this hurts or even stings, tell me right away. Don’t tough it out.”

It’s been a long time since anyone cared if he hurt or not.

Then there’s Moira, the lone resident human, and the only fully licensed physician. She never does more than greet Erik politely, and he’s relieved she has no role in his care – or he is until he realizes that, of course, Charles and Hank consult with her before making any decisions. They shield him from contact with humans. Erik doesn’t know whether to find that considerate or condescending. Perhaps it’s both.

After he has the lay of the place and can recognize the others by the sounds of their footsteps, Charles starts what would, in any other establishment, be called “vocational training.” They review the basics of how to live without sight. Erik hates it.

 _If you hang and fold your clothing by color, you can have some idea what matches._ Charles’ mind seems so earnest and hopeful that it reminds Erik of the ephemeral sweetness of the bubbles in that first 7-Up. _Black with black, white with white, so on and so forth._

“Why do you care?” Erik sits in the chair in his room, once again tracing the outlines of all the metal he can feel … not just here, but throughout the entire mansion, now. His powers are healing. “I never bothered much about clothes before. Do you think I’m such a slave to human opinions now?”

After a brief pause, Charles answers, _If your clothing is markedly different from what others are wearing, you’ll stand out. You movements will be more easily observed._

Erik wishes he thought that insight came from Charles’ telepathy, but he doesn’t. Either he’s obvious or – or Charles is beginning to understand him.

Worse, he finds himself dutifully trudging through the training because he finds he likes pleasing Charles. It’s only temporary, of course – placating him with trifles such as learning to read Braille. Charles even buys him a Braille typewriter; it would be churlish to refuse to use it. And Erik’s efforts seem no more than a fair trade for a real bed, real food and … call them good intentions.

Because he has come to believe that Charles sincerely thinks he’s doing the right thing with his dutiful classes and his gentle treatment and this hidey-hole away from the cold cruel world.

And, as Charles has said – good intentions make a difference.

But they don’t change reality. They don’t change what has to be done.

 

**

 

“You don’t remember me, do you?”

Lifting his face from the table where he’s strapped down belly first. Telling himself it can’t be the same voice. It _can’t._

“You wouldn’t have known this name. But I suspect you know this face.”

Seeing the figure of “Dr. Shaw” stepping into the light. Knowing this to be Schmidt, knowing that he would be better off in hell.

Hearing Shaw laugh.

“Have you missed me, little Erik? Shall I remind you of our games?”

Twisting against the restraints, but they’re leather instead of metal, and they can hold him forever.  The rubber gag in his mouth muffling every curse, every word, every scream.

“Emma. Take us back to Auschwitz. Let Erik believe that he is there. I think he’s missed it.”

Mud and barbed wire and the ash of his parents’ corpses in the merciless gray sky.

“Here we are again. And this time we never have to leave. 

Not this, not this, anything but this –

 _Erik._

With a gasp, Erik sits bolt upright from the bed. As always when he awakens from dreams, he is first shocked and horrified by the disappearance of sight – then relieved. At least the darkness is real.

 _You were so frightened I heard you upstairs. I hope it’s all right that I woke you._

“Yes.” His voice is thin, raspy. “Are you – in the room with me?”

 _Yes, I’m right here._ Charles steps forward, so that Erik will hear his bare feet against the rag rug. His ears are sharp enough for that now, or his attention is.  _I thought you shouldn’t be alone._

As if he weren’t always alone.

 _But you aren’t. I wish you understood that._

“You don’t – you don’t understand as much as you think, for all your – mind-reading.”

 _Let’s not worry about me right now. Do you want to talk to me about that dream?_

Not in particular. But it occurs to him that the more Charles knows about Sebastian Shaw, the better. “All right. All right.”

Yet the words won’t come out, and Erik finds himself still gulping in unsteady breaths. His body won’t stop shaking. Although he rarely worries much about how he looks any longer, he can’t help wondering what Charles sees.

 _You don’t look weak. You never could._ After a moment’s hesitation, Charles asks, _Is it all right if I touch you?_

It has to be all right. Any other answer means that there could be more than one way in which Charles would want to touch him, a way that Erik would recognize and think about. They cannot admit this, neither of them.

Yet Erik doesn’t feel coerced when he nods.

Charles steps still closer, and then one hand strokes through Erik’s hair. Again. Once more. It’s a simple touch, gentle and soothing and repetitive. Erik finds himself relaxing into it.

 _The man in your dream – that’s Dr. Sebastian Shaw?_

“Yes.”

 _And you feel certain he’s the same man who tortured you at Auschwitz?_

“You got that from my dream, too?”

 _I knew from the first day – from your tattoo – some of what you’d been through. That Shaw Laboratories wasn’t the first or worst prison you’d known._

“I couldn’t say which was worse. I’d prefer not to try.”

 _Forgive me._

“You can see them? The numbers?”

 _Yes. They’re still there._

Erik had wondered, sometimes, whether Shaw took them too, the better to cover his tracks. It could have been burned off with acid, tattooed over into one black blur. There were days when the pain was so great or the delirium so complete that Erik wouldn’t even have noticed.

 _How did he take your sight? I’ve never understood what possible experiment he could have performed that would do that to you. And you’re very disciplined at not thinking about it._

Only the rhythmic brush of Charles’ fingers through his hair allows Erik to answer.  “He’d always wanted to know whether metal looked different to me. Ever since I was a child, I’d told him it didn’t. But that was never good enough. Finally – in the lab – just to shut him up, once when I couldn’t take any more, I told him it did. So after that they studied my eyes. On the day they shone bright lights into my eyes for hours on end – hour after hour with the lids taped open – that was the end.”

Erik had never imagined you could scream in pain just from that, just from the unending light.

 _Oh, Erik. I’m sorry. If I had only found out about you earlier –_

“It wouldn’t have mattered. Shaw wouldn’t have handed me over to you if he didn’t think he’d used me up.” Erik breathes in, breathes out, and he belongs to himself again. Charles’ hand stills, then drops away. “And I don’t waste much time on regrets.”

 _You’re wiser than I am, in that way at least._

“You think about Marko, then. He haunts you, as Shaw does me.”

A long pause follows. _Do you know the worst part? Marko was right. When he took my voice, I did learn to project my thoughts. His experiment worked just as he’d hoped._

“You would have learned how to do it anyway,” Erik insists, though of course he can’t be certain. Is this what loyalty feels like?

 _Maybe I would have, maybe I wouldn’t. But I appreciate the thought. Are you easier now? I could help you get back to sleep quickly, if you’d like._

He realizes that Charles is offering his psychic power as a kind of sedative – the way he used it when they first met, though now with Erik’s consent. Automatically he starts to refuse … but then he’ll only spend hours lying in bed, gnawing on his dry useless rage. “All right.”

As he settles back into his bed, it occurs to Erik that he wants to ask Charles to stay. Just to sit near him while he sleeps. How ridiculous and childish. That sounds as if he wants Charles to remain there to keep back the bad dreams.

Which isn’t his motivation.

But this isn’t the time to think about that.

 _Rest,_ Charles whispers in his mind, and the dark is gentle again. 


	4. Chapter 4

“As long as we’re not known to the public, there are mutants not known to us.” That’s Hank, his boyish voice at odds with the authority in his voice. Erik had already identified him by the pinpoints of metal at the rims of his glasses. “And some of them are known to Shaw.”

 _Once we perfect Cerebro, we’ll be able to find mutants long before Sebastian Shaw ever has a chance to._ Charles’ “voice” has a different timbre when he’s speaking to several people, rather than to just one.

“How long will that be?” Moira says. She wears little earrings of silver, an earring Erik can sense but do relatively little with. It’s a random thought, though; he no longer feels the need to hold anything over Dr. McTaggart’s head. “If Shaw finds ten more mutants before then – if he finds even one – can we live with that?”

Raven gets as angry as a child about to throw a tantrum, and yet still speaks good sense. “And if we advertise that there are mutants here, how long do you think we get to exist? People will – picket us. Burn stuff on our lawn.”

“Hey,” Armando interjects. “The KKK hasn’t declared itself anti-mutant. Not yet, anyway. They save their hate for we lucky few.”

“You don’t think there’s hate out there for mutants?” Raven shoots back.

Armando is unmoved. “Yeah, but until we get actual lynch mobs up here, maybe you could stop pretending you’re the most discriminated-against person in this room, Miss I Can Change The Color Of My Skin Whenever I Want.”

“So now you want to change the color of your skin?” It’s the first thing Angel has said in days.

 _Everyone, please._ Charles can sound so tired, even in his mind. _The concerns you’re talking about now are valid, but they’re getting us away from our main question today, namely, whether or not to make this facility’s true purpose known._

Alex says, “Are we actually going to vote about this? Or are we just talking to hear ourselves talk?”

 _Somewhere in between. We haven’t heard from our newest member. Erik, what do you think?_

Erik startles – not visibly, he hopes. Until this moment, he’d assumed he was a future subject for discussion at this meeting, and that his presence here was Charles’ effort at being polite. He never dreamed that his opinion would be asked, about this or anything.

Is it possible that “Xavier’s Home” is … exactly what it claims to be?

Shaw can’t believe that. He’d never have released Erik otherwise. But Shaw might just be wrong.

Erik might have been wrong too.

He clears his throat. “Those in the government who think mutants live here – do they think we’re prisoners?”

Moira answers him – their first venture into conversation. “’Prisoners’ is the wrong word. I would say … patients.”

“But they think of us as confined,” Erik says. “Limited.”

 _Yes. That would be accurate. It’s not an impression I strive to create, but given the way Shaw operates, it’s hardly surprising_  

That’s Charles’ way of referencing the tortures Erik and Angel endured – perhaps others besides, though Erik hasn’t yet asked.  At first Erik finds it an almost unforgivable understatement; then he remembers that Charles knows what torture is. He’s trying to be tactful, to spare Erik and the others, as though that were even possible.  

“If you make it clear that the mutants who come here recover – that we grow stronger, that we remain people humans might fear – then this home will be feared as well.” Erik keeps his head level, his expression steady. Maybe he can no longer meet anyone’s eyes, but he should come across as someone to be listened to.  “In an ideal world, all mutants would be safe. This is no ideal world.  If you endanger the few you have already protected, then you’ve gained nothing.”

A brief silence follows, broken at last by Hank. “Then when do we speak out?”

“When you can act from a position of strength,” Erik replied.

 _When will that be? In your opinion._

The words rise up from him, overwhelming. It’s not that he’s never thought it before – far from it – but it’s the first time he ever thought he might find allies. “When Sebastian Shaw is dead.”

A silence follows. Erik senses shock. But he does not sense disapproval.

 _Resolved. We do not raise our public profile. Instead we put all our resources toward Cerebro._

The meeting breaks up somewhat awkwardly. Erik notes that nobody is yet ready to make plans to go after Shaw. And yet the very fact that it’s not impossible – that he might acquire the allies that will make Erik’s long-delayed revenge come to pass – is a greater gift than he would have dreamed possible even a few hours ago.

He waits, and knows even without listening that Charles stays behind with him.

Once the footsteps down the hall have become distant, and they are alone, Erik hears, _I knew you wanted Shaw dead. I hadn’t realized you were so intent on doing it personally. And literally._

“Why did you wait until the others were gone? You could speak to me privately at any time.”

 _It feels more polite. Don’t change the subject._

“I’ve killed before. You must have sensed that.”

 _I had._

“Does that frighten you?”

 _Yes, of course._

“Does it disgust you? 

 _Not given the men you targeted, and your reason for doing so. If any cause is just, it’s yours. But I question whether your means best achieve our ends._

Erik feels his temper smoldering, threatening to ignite, but keeps control of himself. The idea of having an ally is as new to him as the idea of lethal action is to Charles. They will each need time to adjust their expectations. “Sebastian Shaw is a mutant himself, one who uses his power to oppress and harm anyone who gets in his way. In addition he is masterful at manipulating those in authority to support his aims. Finally, he’s a sadist. This is not someone to be reasoned with, Charles.”

 _Do you think I could believe otherwise, after what he did to you?_ The pain Charles feels for him is real; Erik can sense it at the edges of his mind. _But you’ve told us about his power. When we hit Sebastian Shaw, it just gives him the strength to hit back harder. Maybe we have to think of another way_.

“I don’t particularly want to live out my life in a world with Shaw in it.”

 _Please don’t put yourself on the other side of the scales. Your value is too great to be measured by his._

Erik can’t think too much about what Charles really means.

Charles continues, _You think the most important thing is killing Shaw. I think the most important thing is stopping him._

“Killing him accomplishes that.”

 _Perhaps. But it doesn’t end the work of those laboratories._

Erik can’t even contemplate that right now, the machines of hatred dissecting his people on and on, even without Shaw at the controls. He goes back in their conversation instead. “My willingness to kill – it scares you.”

 _And my telepathy scares you, because of what Emma did to you when you were imprisoned at the lab. For two friends, we intimidate each other rather badly, you and I._

Friends. So they seem to be. Erik doesn’t know precisely when that happened, but he can’t regret it.  Yet it makes Charles seem no less formidable, nor his telepathy less dangerous.  Everything is happening so fast.

 _My talents are dangerous. But that’s not all they are. Just as you are a dangerous man, but that’s not all you are, you see?_

“You should mind your turns of phrase around a blind man.”

It’s a low blow, meant to shock and embarrass Charles into retreating. Instead, Charles replies, _That was more than a mere turn of phrase. Will you let me try something?_

Erik nods. And then –

\--and then he is looking across the meeting room table (oak) and looking over his own shoulder (a silhouette) and he can see the sunset. He can _see_ it.

Charles’ vision. Charles’ eyes. But Erik has the sunset all the same. It’s not an especially glorious one by any objective standard – dusty purple edges to a cloudy sky – but it pierces him through. Just the experience of color is more beautiful to him than anything else has ever been before.  The simplest pleasures, turned miraculous –

“Oh,” he whispers. His voice is unsteady. “You’re not – this isn’t an illusion?”

 _It’s the same sunset I see. You can trust it._

The unspoken question, of course, is whether Erik can trust Charles along with his sunsets.

 

 

**

 

Erik never really decides that question. He doesn’t know whether he trusts Charles’ abilities or not. But he does see how uniquely useful they are to him in his situation. 

Within that same week, he allows Charles to start to guide him with his mind. At first it’s subtle – a hint about something that’s just beyond his grasp, a suggestion of the outlines of the room when Erik is feeling lost – but the possibilities are too tempting not to explore. His world expands yet further. And besides … they’ve started having fun.

 _This is highly irresponsible._

“Isn’t it? But I’m enjoying myself.” Erik grins.

 _Must you go so fast?_

“Keep our eyes on the road.”  With that, Erik stomps on the gas and the Chevrolet speeds past fifty miles per hour. He merges onto the main flow of traffic effortlessly – Charles even glances at the side mirror for him at the exact right moment.

This means Charles has to rest his head on Erik’s shoulder, but – that’s a necessity for what they’re doing. Their enjoyment can only be for the ride.

 _Concentrate, Erik. Think about what you can sense, not only what I can see. In time, if you’re sensitive enough to the metal around you, I honestly think you’re capable of driving on your own._

So Erik concentrates. He can feel the cars around him, judge their velocity, even understand their acceleration. More is needed, though, and he expands his awareness, refines it, until he can even begin to sense the people within the cars. They speak to him by the rivets of their jeans, the clips on their ties, the coins in their pocketbooks and even the fillings in their teeth. Were anyone to attempt to cross the highway on foot – foolish as that would be – Erik feels certain he’d be able to tell from the feel of metal alone. All this he knows without ever losing his grasp on the larger bulks of metal he senses, or the vision Charles lends him through his eyes.  His powers are increasing in both strength and dexterity to fill the void left by his lost sight.

 _Slow down! If we’re pulled over for speeding, we’ll never manage to explain this._

For the first time in what feels like years, Erik laughs out loud.

The ripples of psychic warmth he feels from Charles must be how he laughs now. It’s nice. This is somehow the best drive he’s ever taken, the best ride he’s ever had.

By the time they return home in the early afternoon, they are equal parts exhausted and elated. Erik goes up the front steps of the mansion easily, as aware of the metal bars beneath its framework as he is the buckle of Charles’ belt.  Charles has taken away the vision by now, by their mutual assent, but Erik doesn’t need it here.

 _Not at home,_ he thinks – and then nearly chokes on the thought.

 _Erik? Are you all right?_

He casts around for a distraction and finds one in a thin layer of metal backing along one wall, the sort of thing found in several rooms, which mystified Erik until he realized they were mirrors. The metal content is so small that they’d never attracted his attention before he was blinded; he hasn’t missed the irony. “Can I take one more look? 

 _Of course._ Charles catches on instantly. They walk in front of the mirror, side by side, and that borrowed vision shimmers around Erik anew. He breathes in sharply – not from shock, but from an emotion too overpowering to ignore and yet too ephemeral to name. There, in the mirror, is his own face.

At first all he can do is stare. He is thinner than before, but not as bony as he had thought he would be; the better food here at Xavier’s Home has done its work and restored him to someone very like his former self. Combing his hair as he had before has in fact given him much the same results. At first glance he seems almost unaltered. Even his eyes don’t appear much different, though it’s odd to see them not looking straight back from his reflection.

The turtleneck he’s wearing is indeed black. Apparently this business of folding like with like serves him well.

Carefully he pushes up his sleeve and holds his arm before the mirror. There is the tattoo, the proof of his survival and of his vow for revenge. At first he sees it reflected backwards; then Charles looks down at it directly.

 _Does that help? Seeing it again?_

“Yes. But it wasn’t actually myself I was most interested in seeing. Otherwise I wouldn’t have needed the mirror.”

 _Oh. All right._

Their shared gaze returns to the mirror. The focus shifts, and he becomes the blurry, half-seen one off to the side. Charles is now staring at himself.

He’s younger than Erik had realized, perhaps only in his mid-twenties. His hair is a soft brown, unfashionably long; it could be combed halfway over his ears. The brows are defined, dark, almost diabolical, but the effect is gentled by large eyes of an almost startling shade of blue. His clothes are such a disaster – so shapeless and fusty – that Erik wonders whether he needs to talk to Charles about the shirt-folding tricks. Yet his pale skin is smooth, and the lines of his face somehow both boyish and aristocratic. The shape and flush of his lips might almost be called feminine, and yet there is no doubting the masculinity of his strong chin and sharp jaw.

“You’re a handsome man,” Erik says as simply as he can manage.

 _As are you._

The vision tips up toward Erik’s face again, for one split second, before it fades.

 


	5. Chapter 5

Some wounds never heal, but others do.

Erik’s blindness matters less to him than he would once ever have thought possible. He has learned the geography of the mansion by touch, hearing, metal and memory, and he goes about just as easily as he would have before. A life on his own is no longer unimaginable; though Erik can foresee the difficulties, he can now also see what’s possible. Yet he is in no hurry to leave.

His belly is once again used to good meals. His body has regained its health and flexibility. He exercises in the gym alongside the boys. Sean once taped a paper clip to the side of a basketball so Erik could play; he trounced them so thoroughly that they accused him of expanding the hoops whenever he took a shot. Erik just knew where they were – and if he guided that bit of metal on the ball closer, well, he was allowed to compensate.

Angel has begun to talk more easily with the others. Moira now greets Erik in the hallways, and he finds he doesn’t mind. Hank builds three-dimensional models of some of his plans (Cerebro, the Blackbird) so that Erik can appreciate them even in the theoretical stages.

And Charles is … Charles.

With a metal chess set, Erik can feel which piece is which. His game improves. Or maybe it’s just the practice of playing against someone as good as Charles, whose game strategy is so endlessly inventive that it provides constant challenge and stimulation.

They play most nights. They listen to music together. Erik gets Charles to try Beethoven, Mahler, Bach. Charles makes him hear Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday. Both of them complain, but neither of them actually minds once they begin to appreciate the other’s taste.

Charles runs with him in the mornings. They eat side by side in the kitchens for most meals. From the subtle shifts in people’s voices when he and Charles are spoken of, he knows their inseparability has drawn notice, but no one seems likely to acknowledge that or to interfere. If they were challenged, Erik wonders, what would he say? What would Charles say? He realizes he’s yearning for such a challenge, just so he could find out.

Erik has not awakened from a nightmare since the night Charles roused him, comforted him. He knows that’s because he feels safer now. Maybe he actually is safer.

Yet he thinks more and more often of the way Charles’ hand felt in his hair.

Wishes for an excuse to feel it again.

 

**

 

One morning, it’s raining too hard for their run, and Erik allows himself the luxury of sleeping late. He comes downstairs in a good mood, searching with his power to feel what’s going on. Normally he’d be outside now, so this is a time of day when the mansion’s rhythms are still somewhat unfamiliar to him. That will be Hank pacing overhead, already in the grip of one of his new ideas. The back and forth of a thin metal blade in the kitchen suggests someone is making a sandwich or spreading jam on toast – that’s Armando. And Raven is very close, speaking to someone at the door, someone who can now see him on the stairs.

He feels it like a dousing of icewater – that’s what shock feels like coming from a psychic. Charles has felt it in his presence a time or two. But the person standing with Raven is not Charles.

The combination of psychic power and the thin sound of her gasp reveals the truth: This is Emma Frost.

Shaw’s right-hand woman. His keeper, his torturer. Here in Xavier’s Home as a _guest._

“He’s walking around free,” Emma says.

“It’s none of your business,” Raven shoots back.

Erik can’t find the words. Instead he begins searching out all the metal within reach, preparing to pull it to him, fashion it into a vise and clamp it around that vile woman’s neck.

 _Erik, no. You don’t understand._

“How dare you.” It comes out of Erik’s mouth as no more than a whisper. But he knows Charles can hear. “How dare you tell me I don’t understand what was done to me?”

 _She talks to us sometimes._

“She helped blind me.”

 _She’s the reason you’re here.  The reason Alex and Angel are here. Do you understand?_

Emma Frost – Shaw’s lover and helpmeet, his partner in every sense – she is Charles’ person on the inside.

It only makes it worse.

“You know,” he says, and this time it’s loud enough for her to hear, for Charles to hear; everyone in the whole mansion will get every syllable. “You know what’s Shaw’s doing is wrong and you help him do it anyway.”

“We need power,” Emma replies. God damn her, she’s completely unfazed. “Shaw has it. I’m not going to do without it, not being what I am, not with the government knowing what they know. That doesn’t mean I don’t see how things could be better.”

“You won’t do without it.” The metal in the house begins to vibrate; he can feel it in his bones, hear the shudder that ripples through the furniture and the walls. “How very convenient for you. You get to choose what you will and won’t do without. You ally yourself with Shaw to make yourself comfortable. And you stand by while your fellow mutants scream for mercy.”

 _Erik, listen to me, you must not hurt her._

He only wants to hear the bones of her neck snap. “You’re defending her. Defending the woman who helped blind me.”

 _I’m not defending her, I’m telling you that if she fails to return to Shaw Laboratories on schedule, the authorities will look for her, and if they trace her here, we’re all in danger._

To hell with that. Erik doesn’t care about danger any longer; he’s done with hiding and ready to fight. He could crush any vehicle, reverse any bullet, and it would all be worthwhile to hear Emma Frost breathe her last –

\--but the memory of Angel stops him. And Armando, and Raven, and the others. And what would they do to Charles?

This is how his time here has weakened him, Erik realizes. It has given him people to care about. It has given him something to lose.

To Emma he says, “Get out. If I can detect any sign of your presence within five minutes, I’ll kill you where you stand.”

Emma gets out. The door slams shut behind her. Raven says, “Jesus, Erik,” like he just yelled at some boy who brought her home after curfew.

Sock-clad feet hurry down the corridor toward him. _Please talk with me about this._

“What is there to talk about? You welcome that woman as a guest in your home?”

 _She is a means to an end._

“She is a torturer and a killer who makes her own path easier by sacrificing other mutants. How dare you profit from that?” 

 _Emma has saved lives, including yours._

“I would rather be dead than owe her my life!” Charles understands nothing about him; he never did. “You’ve forgotten what it means to be hunted. To be hated.  You keep others safe because it’s an excuse to keep yourself safe – ”

 _That’s not true, and you know it._

Erik yells, “Get out of my head!”

Silence.

After a few moments, Erik reaches out again with his power and senses a car speeding away. Emma must be driving more than 100 miles per hour. He could still throw the car upside down and back again, back and forth on the asphalt until it crushed every bone in her body. But he made a deal with her this time, and he’ll keep it. The next time he meets Emma Frost, there will be no deals.

“Erik?” That’s Raven climbing the stairs. “I understand that you’re angry, okay?”

“You understand nothing.” He begins walking back to his room 

“Charles says – he says to tell you to please hear him out.”

“There’s nothing more to say. I’ve overstayed my welcome as it is. I’ll leave tonight.”

He walks past Charles, close enough to smell the soft cedar scent that clings to him because of the hangers for those damnable ratty sweaters. His nearness doesn’t slow Erik down, not for an instant.

 

**

 

The bus that will take him into New York City leaves three times a day, and Erik accepts that it’s best to take the last one.  The cover of darkness will provide slightly more anonymity.

That means he spends the entire day in his room, but that’s just as well. Anything the others might say to him would only be infuriating, and Erik isn’t much for farewells. He packs his few things and waits.

Above all he keeps waiting for Charles to reach into his head again, or to knock on the door. That will be his chance to tell him every goddamned thing that’s wrong with accepting Emma Frost as an ally, everything that’s wrong with Charles’ whole naïve trust in this world, every way in which he’s betrayed Erik while pretending to be his friend. But as the hours go on, he’s angrier about Charles not coming to him than almost anything else.

Finally someone approaches, but he can tell by the twin points of metal in her ears that it’s Raven.  So he doesn’t even bother replying when she knocks.

“Erik? Listen, I have a note from Charles. I’m slipping it under the door, okay?” Paper scrapes along the floor.

A note. How brutally stupid – wait.

Erik drops to his knees and lifts the note; with a touch he confirms that it was written on his Braille typewriter, the one Charles bought for him. Although his reading is still slow, he gets through it reasonably well.

 

 _I’ve stayed out of your head, as you asked, but it’s obvious that you are planning to leave us tonight.  All I can tell you, Erik, is that I understand._

 _You want to kill Sebastian Shaw. This is the only way I can help._

 

What follows are precise directions to Shaw Laboratories. Despite his long confinement there, Erik never knew exactly where it was; they drugged him for the first time before they took him in. There is information about which train he might take from Penn Station. Another street address is the one where Sebastian Shaw currently lives. Charles even includes the name of a bank in midtown Manhattan, gives an account number and security information Erik can use to withdraw as much money as he might need or want.

The only way Charles could provide more help would be to drive the car himself.

 

 _All day I’ve been thinking about what you said to me – that I made a safe place for others only so I could be safe myself. Down deep perhaps you know that’s not true, or you will know it, someday. I hope so. But you made me ask myself when I began looking at safety as our first goal, instead of justice. Instead of valor. When those are sacrificed for safety, what do we lose?_

 _Providing a safe space for the most abused of our kind is worthy, it’s necessary, but on its own it’s not enough. Working with Emma achieved some good, but how much more good might I have done if I hadn’t accepted her terms, if I’d demanded that she do what she knows to be right? How many more lives might I have saved? You were right to shout me down, to make me face the cost of cooperation. I don’t ever want to have to ask myself those questions again. You have changed my course, and for the better._

 _Wherever you go after this, Erik, whatever path you choose, you will never lack courage. You’ll never lack strength. Your resolve is a part of you – it is ink on your skin, steel in your soul. I pray you will never lose your way. I’m grateful to have known you, even for so brief a time._

 _And if you ever need to come back – or if you even just want to, maybe to visit, someday when you’ve forgiven me – you are always welcome here. I hope we will become more than a safe place, but as long as we have any safety, any resources, they are yours to share._

 _I’ll miss you more than you can know._

 _Charles_

 

Erik keeps tracing his fingers over that last sentence, over and over, memorizing the feel of it against his skin. He thinks of the map he’s been given to his revenge against Sebastian Shaw.  He sits on the edge of his bed and remembers his astonishment at waking on a mattress instead of a concrete floor.

 

Safety and valor. 


	6. Chapter 6

He is able to sense nightfall as the quality of the dark changes around him. The mansion is very quiet; several of the others went out in the late afternoon, for purposes he doesn’t know, leaving only a handful behind. Erik knows the path out will be clear, that no one stands in the way of his departure.

Erik steps into the hallway. He finds his way by memory and metal to the door he seeks, then opens it.

Probably he should have knocked first. Charles is in bed already. He shifts – sitting up, perhaps? – but his voice does not echo in Erik’s head. He is maintaining the silence Erik asked for.

So Erik speaks. “Shaw … I’ll kill him someday, but not when it can be traced here. If I did it soon, Emma would know, and she’d turn us all in to save her own hide. You realized as much, of course. But you were willing to try to weather the storm. Thank you for that.”

Charles rises from the bed; the springs give, and his footfalls are soft on the floor. He crosses to just in front of Erik, where his breathing seems very close. When he takes one of Erik’s hands, Erik sucks in a sharp breath – but Charles holds that hand to his own throat.

Then he says, “Goodbye, Erik.”

It’s a terrible sound. Scratchy and faint, more like a mimicry of human speech than the real thing – Erik felt the vibration against his hand more than he heard it. And from the catch in Charles’ throat, the strained wavering sound of it, he knows the pain was agonizing. But this is all the voice Charles has left.

Erik whispers, “I’m not leaving. Not tonight. Maybe not – for a long time, or never – Charles, I’m not going. You have to understand that.” He swallows hard. “You have to understand that this isn’t a negotiation.”

By this he means the way he reaches for Charles.

His fingertips make contact with Charles’ hair, just around his ears. Slowly, carefully, Erik feels his way toward Charles’ face, and he begins to explore. One thumb draws the line of those dark brows; another tests the straight firm bridge of his nose. Unshaven cheeks are rough against his palms. Everything he feels, he maps onto the face he saw in the mirror: This is Charles, revealed to him completely for the first time.

With one hand he combs backward into that soft hair again, clutching a handful to hold Charles in place, as he traces the outline of his lips. As he does so, Charles parts his mouth slightly. Erik sighs.

His voice unsteady, he says, “This isn’t something I’m doing because you’re changing how you handle things. This isn’t how you’re asking me to stay.”

Charles shakes his head no.

“Please – you can talk to me. I shouldn’t have silenced you; it was unfair.”

One of Charles’ hands covers his, and Erik understands perfectly. It’s Charles’ way of saying that this is theirs, only theirs. But still no words echo within Erik’s mind.

Yet it’s all right – Erik knows that much. Charles will speak again when he’s ready. For now, perhaps, they don’t need words.

So Erik continues his exploration. He traces the point of Charles’ chin, the column of his neck. Apparently Charles wore no pajama top or undershirt to bed, because Erik’s palms slide across the bare skin of his shoulders. Now downward, along the ribs; Charles’ breaths are quick and shallow now, and Erik can feel their rise and fall against his fingertips.

As he brings his arms around Charles, the better to caress his back, the embrace is returned. Charles nestles his head against Erik’s chest; he holds Erik just at the waist. Still he allows Erik to be the active one, while he waits and accepts and consents. Erik measures himself against Charles’ body – he is taller, broader, stronger, and yet there is a kind of steel to Charles, too, a sharpness that shouldn’t be underestimated. If he thinks of himself as a broadsword, then Charles is a sabre.

Once again Erik brings his hands to Charles’ face. At first, when he brushes near Charles’ eyes and finds them still closed, he thinks nothing of it – but then he realizes Charles has not opened his eyes the entire time, for the same reason he has not spoken to Erik’s mind. He wants to experience Erik only as Erik experiences him; it is his promise that it’s enough, that even injured as they are they are more than enough, and they will know each other completely.

The first sunset in years. His tattoo still on his arm. And now what it means to feel the kind of love that tears your heart open. Through Charles Erik sees everything. Vision is the least of it.

He gauges the distance perfectly as he leans forward; their lips meet and it’s just right. Charles tilts his face upward into it, and their mouths open at the same moment. Erik drinks in the taste of him, drawing Charles’ tongue between his own lips and sucking softly until Charles’ hands finally grip him harder, right at the hipbones.

Charles’ bed is made of brass. Each line and curl is bright in Erik’s mind, so it’s easy to walk them there. But Charles is less certain with his eyes shut, even in his own room. He relaxes only when Erik lays him out on the bed.

There are so many things he could say to Charles now. He could swear his love. Beg his forgiveness for demanding that Charles be quiet, for reinforcing what Marko did. Or he could ask Charles to touch him in all the ways that Erik longs to be touched. But just as Charles has surrendered his sight while they’re together, Erik will surrender his voice. They will be together in shadow and silence.

They curl around each other, melt into one another. Erik’s arms frame Charles’ shoulders; Charles brings one thigh up between Erik’s legs. He kicks off his shoes, his socks, so that he can even feel Charles’ toes brushing along his ankle.

When Charles begins undressing him, impatient to feel skin against skin, Erik has to pull away for a few moments. Though it’s the fastest way to get rid of his clothes, he hates spending even these seconds away from the feel of Charles’ body against his.

But as he works, he hears the bedside table rock and rattle, which is followed but a solid plastic thump on its tabletop. Once he realizes what that is, he has to grin – and this is the first time he’s realized even a smile makes a sound.

Then he returns to Charles, naked and ready – as Charles now is himself.

Lovemaking is different now. It’s not the lack of sight that truly changes things, though Erik would give much to see Charles at this moment. Instead, it’s Charles’ lack of a voice, or at least that combined with his own blindness. Erik is used to gauging his partners’ arousal by their words, the sounds they make or the expressions he wins on their faces. He and Charles have to be more intuitive.

So he pays attention to the pace of Charles’ breathing. To the way his toes curl against Erik’s calf. In return he is sure to react to every touch, every kiss that pleases him, to reveal it in the movement of his whole body. The communion requires them to pay attention to every single inch of skin; just the way they’re moving against one another has become almost impossibly intimate.

Without words, they can’t joke to dim the impact; they can’t share the usual distracting chit-chat of such occasions – explaining scars or complimenting beauty or sharing histories. Has Charles even done this before with a man? Has he been to bed with anyone at all? How much has his muteness kept him apart from regular human experience? Erik doesn’t know, can’t know, but it’s better this way, he thinks. He has to be careful of Charles – to treat him as something precious, this night as something irreplaceable. Or rather, it is that he can’t forget those things, as he otherwise might in the heat of the moment.

Then Charles kisses his way down Erik’s belly, and – oh, yes, Charles has done this before.

Erik has to fight not to groan as Charles licks his cock, sucks once at the head and then takes him in. It’s as if the entire world has been engulfed by the wet heat of Charles’ mouth. He can sense nothing, desire nothing, besides this. Erik twines his fingers in that soft hair; just the way Charles turns and jerks his head is unbelievably arousing. But mostly he knows only the throb and thrust of it, the warm give he finds between Charles’ lips.

But then Charles’ fingers slide into him, and dear God, it’s even better. Erik spreads his legs wide, the better to let Charles work him open. When Charles finds the right place, Erik bucks against him and now there’s no mercy, no stopping, just the relentless rhythm of fingers pumping him and mouth sucking harder and harder.

Almost too late, Erik tugs Charles away and pushes him onto his back. Charles makes a little huff – disappointment? Anticipation? Erik’s cock, still wet with Charles’ saliva, is too cold for the few moments it takes Charles to get him into his grip.

That’s also the moment Erik needs to reach that jar on the nightstand.

When the lid scrapes its way free, Charles tenses, and this is _definitely_ anticipation. Erik slicks his hand, gets even more than he thinks he’ll need. He keeps Charles flat on his back, straddles him, and wraps his fingers around Charles’ cock. One stroke – three – now Charles is moving with him, and this is enough, it has to be.

And Erik adjusts himself and slowly, slowly, sinks down onto him.

There’s nothing left but this. Nothing but the burn of Charles opening him up. Charles’ hands grip Erik at the hipbones, and Erik breathes in through his teeth as he forces himself to lower that final inch, until Charles is buried in him to the hilt. He can hear the sound of Charles twisting against the bedsheets – his head turning to one side, his heels digging into the mattress – already writhing in pleasure. For his part, Erik can hardly focus on anything he feels beside the overwhelming pressure of Charles inside him.

But that pressure will only be better when he starts to move. So he does. He lifts himself just enough to feel the give of Charles’ cock inside, then lowers himself again – again. Erik braces his hands against Charles’ shoulders as he rides him, twisting his hips so that Charles will feel it. Within moments, the hands against Erik’s hipbones tighten, and now Charles is guiding him, creating just the rhythm he wants.

Erik’s head lolls back as he keeps going, as Charles urges him to go faster. Fighting back the cries of pleasure is almost perversely exciting; somehow the need is more powerful for being held back.

One of Charles’ hands leaves his hip, captures his cock. Erik gasps as fingers tighten around him, bringing him even closer to the brink than he already is. But he’s going to hold on, dammit, he can hold on until he feels Charles come. More than anything else he wants Charles to come.

Charles is pumping into him now – Erik tries to keep riding him, but it’s impossible with Charles taking over, using Erik’s body the way he wants it used. He has to give in, to let Charles be the one in control, and that’s when he loses it. There’s no more holding on or holding back. The sensation crashes over him, bathes him in the only light he still needs.

Even as he slumps forward, his body gone boneless, Charles thrusts up one more time. Then he feels that answering rush of heat as Charles goes taut and rigid; his fingers seek Charles’ face and find him with his mouth open, panting for breath, eyes still shut.

When Charles breathes out, his muscles finally lax, Erik disentangles them as tenderly as he can. All he wants is to burrow into Charles’ waiting arms.

After a few long moments, he hears, at long last, that voice inside his head: _Next time I’m going to make you scream._

Erik laughs softly. “Next time I want you to watch.”

 _I’ve been dreaming of touching you for so long. I can hardly believe this isn’t just one more dream._

“Very real,” Erik whispers. He kisses Charles’ breastbone, feels fingers weaving into his sweat-damp hair.

 _We have a lot to talk about._

Sebastian Shaw, and Emma Frost, and all the rest. How they will stop Shaw, how Erik will someday kill him, and the lines they’ll draw and cross together from this day onward. But those thoughts don’t belong in this bed. Shaw has claimed enough of Erik’s life; he can’t have tonight, can’t have more than this one sliver of the first night they’ll ever spend together.

“Tomorrow,” Erik says, and it’s both a plea and a promise.

 _Tomorrow._

**

Charles has already showed Erik a sunset. Now he shows him a sunrise to match it.

 

THE END


End file.
